


The Present and the Past

by AndreaLyn



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-18
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-21 15:47:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2473715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sam's health is put at risk, the Senior Staff make their visitations to remind him of who they are and how they all met.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Present and the Past

Toby let the blinds slip from his fingers when the lightning flashed and then thunder filled his office with a foreboding crack, like a whip driving him back to work. He leaned over his desk, watching the small cursor blink away on the document he’d had open for the last hour. He even tapped at his mouse for a moment as if waiting for it to unveil some of life’s great mysteries to him.  
  
“Sam!” he barked out, hoping to get his deputy back for some help.   
  
Bonnie leaned into Toby’s office, carrying a handful of papers. “Sam’s not here, remember? He went with the President to watch him make the…”  
  
“…subsidiaries speech,” Toby finished the sentence with Bonnie, nodding and sighing, shaking his head slightly and wondering where his memory had gone lately. He sighed again and gave a scoff of a chuckle, taking the papers from Bonnie as she came inside. He craned his neck around at another flash of lightning and listened to the rain beat against his window. “You think that’s gonna stop anytime soon?”  
  
“Do I hope or do I know?” Bonnie raised an eyebrow.  
  
“If you could,” Toby rubbed at his temples, “at this point in time, make a conjecture…”  
  
She shrugged. “Weather guy says it isn’t going to stop.”  
  
Toby gave a tight smile. “Great,” he mumbled. “I’ll just take the Weather Guy’s advice because God knows  _he’s_  never been wrong before.” He sighed and went back to his speeches, looking over the introduction for the State dinner coming up.   
  
It was business as always.   
  
“Toby?”   
  
CJ’s voice was somewhere in the White House, but Toby didn’t have a clue where it was coming from. “Toby, turn on the damn television!” she nearly shouted as she barreled into his office. “Get the television on, turn the…” she leaned down and struggled with the remote control, finally winning the battle and turning the channel to CNN. “Have you seen this?”  
  
Toby arched an eyebrow. “Obviously not, or I’d have my television on CNN.”  
  
“Toby,” CJ said seriously, eyes glued to the screen. “Watch.”   
  
Toby let his hands down and fidgeted with a pencil in his hands. “What?” he demanded bluntly. “What am I watching, CJ, I don’t exactly have time to cruise the news channels and stop on Hollywood Squares for the occasional guffaw!” He glared at CJ, only for her to glare back as she snatched the pencil out from his fingers and stared at him like he had suggested the President suddenly announce affiliation with pro-marijuana groups. “CJ,  _what_!”  
  
“Watch the goddamned television, Ziegler!” CJ threatened and Toby finally turned his attention to the monitors to find reporters standing in front of a stretch of asphalt in the rain, talking about…  
  
“Jesus, CJ, when did this happen?” Toby asked, the anger gone from his voice; replaced now with grave concern. “Has Leo called a meeting?”  
  
“Five minutes. We need to find Josh,” CJ relayed. She paced back and forth on her heels. “All right, let’s go. We’ve just got to tell ourselves that it can’t be that bad, right? I mean, it’s just a storm, it’s just the motorcade, it’s just an accident.”  
  
Toby glanced up at her, utterly calm. “Claudia Jean?” he murmured. She froze in place and nodded. “Would you…Could you...When relaying this information to the press corps, could you avoid the wishy-washy sentiment in which we doubt the abilities of our drivers?”  
  
“Yes, Toby, I got that,” CJ glared at him and pivoted on her heel to walk to Leo’s office. She immediately perched herself on the arm of the couch, glancing down at Josh as she withdrew a pad of paper to jot down notes for the briefing. He rested his hand on her thigh and she put her fingers on his shoulder in return, squeezing and hoping that she at least seemed reassuring in her distraction.   
  
Toby stood in the middle of the room, arms crossed as they watched Leo hurry in, in the midst of a conversation with Margaret about nuclear armament in Russia, famine in some African country and the latest poll numbers.   
  
Leo didn’t seem very concerned with those things.   
  
“I just got off the phone,” he explained, giving each of his Senior Staff a moment of eye contact. “The President is  _fine_. He's on his way back here. Secret Service procedure.”   
  
CJ exhaled and Toby glanced over with an amused smirk. It appeared like she hadn’t even known she was holding it in. “Thank God,” she murmured in relief. “All right, so I've got a briefing then.”  
  
There was the brief moment of a good shuffle; clothes and papers and people moving in a mess, all trying to get somewhere. They were lackeys of politicians, there was always somewhere to be and something to spin, but the one unmoving person in the room was Leo, who had a look to his face like he’d had his coffee and his crossword ruined that morning. “That's uh, that's not it, CJ,” he warned, voice not cresting above the quiet volume, like there were secrets in those words.   
  
Toby arched one eyebrow and all the shuffling stopped. Josh sat back down, CJ turned to regard Leo. “What else is there?” Toby asked evenly. It seemed there was always something else.  
  
Leo flipped open a notebook, and from the glances that the Senior Staffers managed to sneak, it appeared to be Margaret’s perfectly neat print. “The President's limousine was unscathed, but the rest of the motorcade wasn't so lucky. One of the motorcyclists fell off the bike. Steven Campbell,” he said, glancing up at CJ, who promptly began to take notes. “Broken ankle, bruised three ribs. Leona Bell of the speechwriting team suffered a sprained wrist and whiplash. Thomas Eln, also of the speechwriting team is suffering from some severe blood loss. He's a hemophiliac.”  
  
Toby’s face took on a paler sheen and CJ noticed that Josh was beginning to stare into space, as though he wasn’t quite listening any longer, like he was just getting the sound bites and saving the reacting for later. Toby cleared his throat and took a step forward when CJ and Josh couldn’t do anything but listen.   
  
He made another small noise. “Who else?” Toby prodded quietly.   
  
Leo hesitated slightly before flipping the page and continuing, adjusting his glasses and reading as though they were just the minutes from a staff meeting. “Jake Mann broke his arm and he's in some deep shock right now.”  
  
Toby didn’t look away, tapped his fingers on his notepad and cleared his throat. After a long moment, he spoke up. “Leo, that sounds like the speechwriting team I sent with Sam.”  
  
Leo glanced up from the page, just long enough for the rest of the Senior Staff to see the bags under his eyes. “Yeah.”  
  
Josh stepped forward, CJ doing the same, like they were working in tandem.  
  
“Leo, how's Sam?” Josh asked.  
  
Leo let the papers fall to his desk and they all understood then. CJ slowly sat down on the nearest armrest and Josh just stared at Toby, like maybe he’d get the answer. “He's not so good,” he admitted.   
  
CJ, whatever she was writing, had now stopped mid-sentence, taking a deep breath. “So, he got a suit dirty?” she joked, the humor of it falling dead on the ground considering that they were all grossly intelligent people and were paid to know way more than what they were supposed to. No one laughed and the room just echoed with the stifling silence.   
  
“Leo?” Toby prodded.   
  
Leo picked up his papers, adjusting his glasses. “Sam Seaborn, Deputy Communications Director is currently in a coma, with some rather significant head trauma. Chances are...” Leo cleared his throat and adjusted the papers, like he just needed better lighting to read them. “The chances are when he wakes up, he's going to suffer from some amnesia. He's also got a lot of bruises.”  
  
“Jesus…” CJ murmured, shaking her head.   
  
“You're kidding,” Josh interrupted CJ’s swear to the gods, and he sounded fairly sick, like he needed a side trip to the washroom to be nauseous.   
  
“No,” Leo said tersely.  
  
“Leo, tell me you're joking!”  
  
“I  _can't_  do that, Josh!” Leo snapped right back at him.  
  
“Oh, god,” CJ finally spoke up, gravitas tugging her voice into a lower octave. The four of them sat in the room until someone regained their composure – in this case, CJ “Does the President know?”   
  
Leo just nodded once. “Yeah. He does.”  
  
They dispelled in several different directions to shout for assistants currently working to grab the phones that were ringing off the hook and to make arrangements to get to Washington General as soon as they could, which in the case of all of them meant after several meetings, phone calls, and memos necessary to running the free world.   
  
*  
  
It was nearing three in the morning when Leo was joined by another silhouetted figure in the halls outside of Sam’s hospital room. He was stable and they were going to attempt to bring him out of the coma in the morning with stimulatory effects. “How’s he doing?” the woman beside Leo asked, pressing a cup of tea into his hand.  
  
Leo peered down. “Is this tea?”  
  
“Dad,” Mallory protested. “Tea’s good for you.”  
  
“That’s a lie, Mallory. Tea has just as much, if not more, caffeine than coffee does. It is not good for you,” he lectured patiently, even as he sipped from the Styrofoam cup.  
  
“That’d be regular tea, and this is chamomile. How’s Sam?” she repeated. She still wore her teaching clothes and looked tired, but it was nearing three in the morning and that was probably a good reason for it. “I heard the nurses talking at the station, but they mostly just said what a shame it was for such a pretty face to get all knocked up,” she tried to joke. Leo didn’t say much at all, just sipped at the tea. “He’s going to be okay, right?”  
  
“We’ll see.”  
  
She nodded, standing beside her father in the halls of the hospital, the both of them staring at the door to Sam’s room, but not setting foot inside.   
  
*  
  
1999  
  
“Toby,” Josh was walking along with him – though really, he was jumping to keep up, waving papers in his face like a maniac. “Toby! Come on, he’s good!”  
  
“He’s a nobody,” Toby said, laughing brusquely. “You brought me a nobody with a resumé that reads like a lawyer…”  
  
“Well, he is a lawyer,” Josh interrupted.  
  
“You brought me a lawyer!” Toby’s voice escalated even more. “I haven’t even known you for two days and already, I don’t like you.” He shook his head, rounding the corner and checking the hall. Then, after a moment of consideration, he took a left instead of a right. Josh followed every step of the way. “Can’t even remember where my damn room is,” he muttered under his breath. “Have I mentioned yet how much I hate campaigning?”  
  
“Yeah, about a dozen times there,” Josh agreed. “Just talk to him.”  
  
Toby sighed, standing outside his room. “Is he going to make me want to hurt … things?”  
  
“I hear you can’t stop that.”  
  
Toby shot Josh a warning look. “Fine. Send him by.”  
  
Josh just grinned widely, pointing at Toby and clapping his hands together once, the index cards in his hands getting all bent out of place. “You will not regret this, my friend!”  
  
Toby just sighed, shaking his head. “And yet, here I go, thinking I will.” He rounded the corner, peering at the latest numbers of polling regarding the Governor’s preferences with the dinner table, catching sight of slick black hair over the top of the pages. “I'm really not hiring assistants right now,” he advised the young man, wondering just when Josh was planning on subjecting the Lawyer on him.   
  
“Me?” the man remarked, sounding all too fresh and surprised. He wouldn’t last an hour in a true political situation. “No, actually, I’m Sam Seaborn.” He extended a hand to Toby. “I’ll be helping out with Communications.”  
  
Toby did not reach over to shake the man’s hand. No. No, because that would be admitting that this pretty-boy was actually the man that was going to be writing speeches for the potential President of the United States of America.  
  
“Joshua Lyman!” Toby bellowed into the hall.   
  
Josh popped his head around the corner, beaming away like maybe The Ghost of Hanukkah Past decided that he finally, finally loved him. “So, you met Sam!” he said, sounding thrilled in a way one only could at the beginning of the campaign. “What do you think?”  
  
“I think,” Toby remarked, words measured, “that you must be joking with me.” This Sam guy hadn’t stopped smiling winningly the whole time which just made Toby rub his temples a little more. “You can stop smiling like that. There is no pageant to win.”  
  
Josh clapped Toby on the back and leaned in, still grinning stupidly. “You’re gonna thank me, Toby. Trust me.”   
  
*  
  
They let Toby into the hospital room before the others, sheerly because when CJ and Donna started bickering about it, he pushed past them with the newspaper clasped in his hands and sat in the chair beside Sam, clearing his throat. Sam was awake, but not speaking; the sound of the heart monitors carried the conversation for Toby while he sought out something to say that would sound vaguely reassuring.   
  
Instead of saying anything, he held out a pad of paper to Sam with his best pen (previously tucked into his suit pocket). “Show me what you can write,” he said evenly. Sam might not know him, might not recognize his own self, but somewhere, there was still a writer in him.  
  
And that was what Toby was going to bring out first.  
  
*  
  
Donna had been at the office in the shadows of the night when she found Josh sitting there in his office, doing nothing but staring at the shut-down computer screen. “You,” she accused, pointing a pen at him. “I sent you home an hour ago so you could go visit Sam in the hospital.” Her look was fraught with concern. “What are you still doing here, Josh?”  
  
“Me?” Josh inhaled sharply, the word inhaled too, almost sucked in completely. “I’m uh…” He exhaled, then, a long push of air that prevented him from saying anything else. “I’m waiting.”  
  
Donna put the pen on the desk for the next day, to sign countless documents as she flicked on the desk lamp, her blonde hair cascading forward like a curtain between her and Josh. She sat in the chair and leaned forward, elbows resting on the desk. “You’re sitting in the dark and avoiding the hospital. Josh!” she accused. “Would you do this if that were me in that bed?”  
  
That seemed to get Josh going. “Donna!” he whined. “Why would you even think that!”  
  
“I don’t know,” Donna idly said. “Maybe because your best friend is lying in a hospital bed and can’t remember his life and you can? And because you aren’t there! You know, Josh, you’re a horrible friend.” She pointed at him as she sat back. “Really. I wouldn’t want you at my hospital bedside. You’d probably even steal my flowers.”  
  
Instead of arguing with her, though, Josh just kept staring at the screen.  
  
“Okay, now I’m getting worried,” Donna announced. “Should I get CJ?”  
  
“He’s…he’s my best friend,” Josh agreed, his words thick and heavy, like they were under the heavy weight of a dozen pounds of cotton swabs. “And he’s gonna look at me, Donna, and he’s not gonna know who I am. And …” A long moment later and he shook his head. “I seriously don’t think I can do that.”  
  
“Josh, he sat with you after you got shot,” Donna reprimanded, but it was just default, a reflex she had long learned not to suppress. “I think you can sit with him while he has a bump on his head.”  
  
“And the…”  
  
“The amnesia? The doctors say it’s just swelling,” Donna reported, having memorized that message hours ago after Bonnie had given it to her. “He’ll be fine within a week, Josh. Go  _see_  him.”  
  
“I thought I was a horrible friend?” Josh managed, finally dragging his gaze away from the screen.  
  
“That’s pending.”  
  
*  
  
CJ had been at the hospital already for four whole hours, waiting outside Sam’s room while Toby visited with him. She checked her watch, checked out several of the male orderlies, then cleared her throat in a distinctly loud way to tell Toby that his time was up playing Pictionary or writing notes or whatever they were doing in there. Toby quietly said something to Sam that CJ couldn’t make out before he wandered slowly into the hall, clasping the notebook in his hand.   
  
“Do you think there's any way we could get Sam's memory back while keeping his new style of writing? I mean, I saw verbs...” Toby began, avoiding eye contact with CJ as he gestured off to the general area of Sam’s room.   
  
“Toby,” CJ warned.  
  
“What?” Toby deadpanned, his gaze still on Sam lying in that bed. CJ turned to look at him, too, eyes caught on the way the bandages were wrapped so thickly around Sam’s dark hair that he looked like he was a couple wraps away from being an extra on the set of A Night Of A Thousand Mummies. “Joke.”  
  
“You're less funny than Josh. I didn't think that possible,” CJ appraised and took the notebook from Toby’s hand. “I’m going to see him. Does he still not know who we are?”  
  
“He thought I might be his cousin,” Toby offered under his breath.  
  
“That’s a big n-o then,” CJ sighed.  
  
“The President wants to come by later, so the Secret Service will be by to check out the area,” Toby advised, running his palm over his head now that his hands were devoid of all objects. “Tell Sam it’s just protocol if he panics. And uh, tell him I said good work.”  
  
“Toby, we’re supposed to be giving him a familiar environment,” CJ reminded him dryly.  
  
“So then hit him with the notebook and tell him to go find his talent.”  
  
“I’ll tell him,” CJ promised quietly, giving Toby a hint of a smile that threatened she might go and tell Sam the first part, the one about ‘good work’ and she might even toss in an ‘I’m proud of you, sport’ if she was feeling particularly impish and needing a boost after her morning with the press. “Go get some rest, tell Josh I’ll talk to him later about distributing Sam’s meetings on the Hill.”  
  
“Will do,” Toby agreed.   
  
CJ took a deep breath and plastered on her very best smile – the one that was entirely fake – before she headed into Sam’s hospital room. “Hey there, Sparky,” she greeted jovially. “Remember me?”  
  
She really wished she didn’t feel so completely dashed when she was met with a ‘not at all’.   
  
*  
  
1999  
  
She hadn’t been with the campaign for long enough to know people’s names and so CJ had been getting away with snapping her fingers at a ‘you there’ and a ‘heya handsome’ and Sparky-this and Intern-Slave-that and eventually she’d learn names. At least, that was what she kept saying. The fact that their candidate wasn’t exactly too keen on learning everyone’s names was hindering her from wanting to get on the ball. She knew Toby and she knew Josh and obviously she knew Leo and Bartlet’s names.  
  
“Are you here with the bagels?” she asked as she dumped her bag onto the table, coming into work at just an  _ungodly_  hour and she was starting to miss Los Angeles and was starting to hate Toby for taking her away from it and her pool and the job she was fired from and okay, maybe she could hate him a little less.  
  
The man turned, prying his glasses off his youthful face and several strands of dark hair fell in his eyes. “Me?”  
  
“Well either you’re the new intern or someone’s giving me a birthday gift early,” CJ deadpanned, studying him and he was just so gosh-darned-pretty that she almost felt bad for all the ways she could make him  _dirty_.   
  
“No, actually, I’m Sam Seaborn,” he squeaked out, his voice breaking on a couple of those words – which meant that CJ had at least succeeded in unnerving him. “Josh brought me in, he wants me to write a couple of the speeches and…”  
  
“Are you really as young as you look or do you just dip your face in stem cells every morning?” CJ interrupted him to ask suspiciously.  
  
“Well, neither,” Sam corrected politely. “I just believe in a healthy regiment involving washing your face in the morning and the diligent care of teeth.”  
  
“And that keeps you young? White teeth?”  
  
“Well, no,” Sam summarily replied. “But I like to think it infuses you with a confidence that makes you seem more attractive and energetic, thus giving the appearance of  _youth_!” he cheerfully added.  
  
CJ stared at him and then the clock and decided that it was, in fact, too early in the morning for this, even if Sam Seaborn wasn’t there to get them bagels and was instead supposed to help the candidate spread his values to Middle America and beyond. “So there’s no chance you’re gonna make a bagel-run, huh?”  
  
“No,” Sam said warmly. “But I brought you today’s schedule and press conference rehearsal questions,” he said of the sheets of paper he’d been binding together and leaving on her desk (which, unfortunately, tended to be the desk of four other people as Campaign Headquarters tended to get crowded that way). “And I think one of the actual interns is out on a bagel run. Onion and poppy seeds, right?”  
  
“Well, maybe you will be useful around here,” CJ said, even if her thoughts had already moved on to something more important involving the schedule and the list of reporters attending the press conference they were about to hold to discuss the upcoming primary state elections.   
  
From her brief glance up from the schedule, that didn’t seem to faze Sam Seaborn in the least and he just kept looking earnestly at her through those glasses and with that preternatural youth. She was getting oh so tired of looking him and wanting to make a quip about someone having a portrait sitting up in his family attic so she gave a shooing gesture with her hand. When she next looked up, he was gone, but CJ knew that Sam Seaborn was either going to be a real help or a real pain in the ass over the coming months.  
  
*  
  
CJ didn’t get back to the White House until after-hours, which for them was really just ‘more hours, prolonged’. Most of the assistants had gone home for the day, but there were lights on throughout the West Wing that displayed with ease who the dedicated few were. And amidst those dedicated few just happened to be a couple cowards as well.  
  
“Still here?” CJ said with a loud  _pound_  on Josh’s door, making him jump right out of his chair. “Josh, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were scared of me.”  
  
“Jesus,” Josh gasped, running a shaky hand through mussed hairs. “CJ, you…y’can’t do that to me,” he protested, half-breathless and half-wheezing out a laugh. “One day, I swear to  _god_ , you’re gonna give me a heart attack.”  
  
“You’re still breathing. So, why aren’t you at the hospital?” she demanded.   
  
“Well, CJ, there’s this little issue where the scientific community hasn’t perfected cloning yet,” he started to explain with a broad and smarmy grin on his face, “which has a tendency to make it difficult for normal guys like me to be in two places at once and because I’m here talking to you, I’m…not. You know, there.”  
  
His words were met with one thoroughly unimpressed stare from CJ.   
  
“Visit,” she said tersely, “Sam.”  
  
“Ceej, seriously, I have work,” Josh sighed and tried a different tactic. It seemed to do a bit of a better trick, seeing as CJ looked him up and down (as if she was looking for the secret in to that lie) but eventually relented and even her posture relaxed. Josh could feel the tension leaving his body in his own sigh, his back slumping over like a perfect example of scoliosis before CJ’s eyes.  
  
“In that case, slip me twenty bucks and I'll buy a bouquet,” she bartered with a nod. “I'll tell him that you send your best wishes, but were too bogged down with work.” The unspoken words lingered in both Josh and CJ’s minds -- that Sam wouldn’t even know better over the fact that as his best friend, Josh should have made an appearance a very long time ago.   
  
Josh muttered something unintelligible as he dug through his pockets and yanked out a couple of bills, leaning forward over his desk as the fan caught them in the draft, blowing them about in a little dance of money – a money dance, if you would. “Twenty? Can't you get flowers for like, six bucks?” he said as CJ plucked the money from his fingers.  
  
“It’s really no wonder women never go on a second date with you,” she observed idly, tucking the money into her palm as she gave Josh a withering look. She didn’t have to say any more for him to understand how absolutely disappointed she was in him.  
  
“Ceej,” Josh exhaled, barely letting his gaze rise above the desk. “I…”  
  
“I’m sure Donna will ride your ass about it  _again_ , later, so you get a miraculous reprieve from me,” she said brusquely. “But this is a ‘just this once’ occurrence,” CJ warned as she left his office and started calling out for Carol the moment she got more than a couple steps towards her office. “We’re going flower-picking, Carol!”  
  
*  
  
If anyone had walked into the hospital that evening, they might have thought it a defunct ward that had been evacuated a very long time ago. There was no one roaming the halls and on each main doorway was a large man in a black suit looking more like a ghost than a regular person. One room had more activity than the rest, though, and that just happened to be the room belonging to Sam Seaborn.   
  
“They say,” the President said calmly, perched in a chair beside the bed, “that the swelling should recede within the week. They showed me charts and all. It was vaguely amusing, at first, to see the doctors try and simplify things for me.” He offered a half-smile at Sam’s look of confusion. “That’s right, I forgot you don’t remember, but I’m what people might call an ‘obnoxious know-it-all’.” He let his eyes widen slightly as he leaned in. “People don’t want a smart President, you know. I’m told regularly I need to…what was the phrase, ‘dumb it down’.”  
  
“Yes …sir?” Sam replied, unsurely.   
  
“Well, you’ll understand when those memories come back,” the President sighed. “The good news is that we didn’t lose you. I imagine I’d never hear the end of that from either Leo or my conscience, and I’m still not convinced they’re not the same person.”  
  
Outside, it was another rainy night as if the heavens were taunting them for the accident that should never have happened and Sam sat there amidst the trappings of the hospital, propped up and looking alert (if not cognizant of exactly who he was in the presence of).  
  
“Now, when you say the President…”  
  
“Of the United States, yes,” he filled in easily. “Unless there’s been a secret coup behind my back. They have always warned me of the possibility, but I always thought that was just the Secretary of State’s way of telling me he doesn’t like what I’ve been doing in foreign affairs,” he remarked, with a slight edge in his voice. “You work for me, Sam,” he said with a heavy nod of his head. “You’ll come back and you’ll keep working for me, no doubt continuing to be a pain in my ass when it comes to proving me wrong in a number of categories and trying to be the idealist we all forgot was out there when our stays in Washington lapsed just a little too long.”  
  
“I’d very much like to come back and do that. Provided it’s not leading me to get fired.” He paused, giving the President a wary look. “It… _wasn’t_  about to get me fired, was it?”  
  
“Not under my watch.”  
  
*  
  
Donna had told Josh she was going out for dinner and then to perform the duties he really should have been doing but for his terrible shame and cowardice. There was more to it than that, but it wasn’t like she’d sat there transcribing it or anything. With yet another bouquet in hand (and it was probably a good thing Sam wasn’t allergic to the things, Donna reflected, as she entered a room swamped in flowers), she arrived to pay her visits, displacing one of the nurses who was giving his dinner.  
  
“The doctors would like to speak to his closest of kin,” the nurse murmured quietly on the way out. “There’s a new prognosis and it’s positive. Not to go into much detail, but the swelling is reducing at an increased rate. They’ll be able to answer more questions and go into further detail where I can’t.”  
  
“Good. That’s…really good,” Donna replied, almost shocked at how surprised she was to hear the good news. With one more nod of thanks to the nurse, she entered the room and planted her own little mini-bouquet amidst some bigger ones.  
  
“I figure when I get out of here, I’ll be able to make about three parade floats,” Sam offered helpfully as Donna jammed the daisies in with some roses and tiger lilies. “Or possibly cover a hundred beds with flower petals. So who are you?” he asked, in the tone of voice that said he’d become used to asking that very question.  
  
Donna slid into the chair beside the bed, resting her palm face-down on the covers as she gave him a warm smile. “Donnatella Moss, colloquially Donna. I’m Josh’s assistant.”  
  
“The mythical Josh Lyman,” Sam remarked, his voice mildly bitter. “I keep hearing about him, but I’m starting to think he doesn’t actually exist.”  
  
“No,” Donna said. “That’s just what I wish were true some days.”  
  
There was a long silence between them and Donna reached over to clasp Sam’s hand in hers, a weak smile on her face.  
  
“I wish I knew why he’s doing this. I know he’s not the biggest fan of hospitals…for good cause…but this is pretty weird, even for him. He’s a good man,” she swore, determined and as if she could move down the mountains of judging with just her beliefs, “He is. He’s just…so Josh sometimes it’s ridiculous,” she laughed softly, tipping her head to one side. “But I promise I will kick his ass so hard, he’ll land here whether he likes it or not.”  
  
The quiet moment between them drew out and Donna wasn’t used to Sam being so quiet. He should have been shouting down the rafters with some new eloquent speech to be had and instead, he was lying in a hospital bed and looking more confused than she had ever seen him.  
  
“Donna Moss,” Sam said, as if searching for the name amidst a hazy bank of them in his mind. “I wish I could remember you.”  
  
“You and me both, Sam,” Donna agreed.  
  
*  
  
1999  
  
“I thought you were just a myth that the copyroom made up to assuage people that things that fell on Josh Lyman’s desk wouldn’t  _actually_  get lost within the hour into a mysterious and neverending black hole that somehow eludes time, space, and the FBI,” Sam observed of the young woman who had managed to take the miniscule amount of office space they each had for themselves and make it…well, organized. Neat. It actually resembled an office, which none of theirs did.  
  
She was cute. Well, cute in the way that she  _was_  cute but Sam could never, ever, not in a million years say that aloud lest he get sued for a dozen types of harassment, but she was.  
  
“What’s your name?” he asked. “So I can spell it on the medal.”  
  
“M-O-S-S,” she narrated in the midst of filing briefs. “Donna Moss,” she introduced with a flicker of a nervous smile in his direction. “You’re Sam. Josh, when I do see him, tends to not shut up about you. I think he thinks you’re going to whistle down a cloud and golden chariots for the campaign any second now.”  
  
“That’s what I get for putting that in my skill set on my resume,” Sam said, in a completely earnest tone. “I’ve heard good things,” he continued, switching from the joking to the serious as if he had just flicked a switch and it was as easy as that. “Keep that up, Josh will need someone when we get to the White House.”  
  
Donna glanced up from her work, giving Sam a hint of a mischievous smile. “ _When_?” she echoed.  
  
“Err on the side of the positive,” Sam said with great exuberance. “It’s hard not to feel that sense of overwhelming hope for the Governor. I mean, he’s smart. When was the last time you could proudly say that about your commander in chief? And more than that, he cares. He cares about New Hampshire so much I think it just might kill him if we didn’t deliver the state. And he’s the real thing.”  
  
“Well,” Donna announced, shuffling papers with a quiet finality to it as she returned Sam’s smile (with some of the cheer edged off because not everyone could look like Sam Seaborn, not even on their best days). “I’m glad you’re the one writing the speeches. I’d just ask people to vote for him because he seems like a good guy and I want a job.”  
  
“You’ll learn the spin soon enough,” Sam promised, his gaze distracted by something in the hall, but he seemed determined to finish up his conversation with Donna before he went sprinting off. “We’d just call that economically-minded.” The ‘something’ in the hall seemed to be winning the battle for his attentions and he gave her a polite nod and an even-broader smile. “We’ll talk again, Donna, okay? I’ll see you around. And thank you for keeping Josh in line. I don’t think anyone can thank you enough.”  
  
He was gone by the time Donna was answering with a ‘my pleasure’ and he was definitely gone before Donna could say anything about how it was the very best job she’d had in years.  
  
*  
  
Sam had been confused at first to see another visitor in the vein of pretty, young, and blonde, but this one didn’t have flowers and instead had a suitcase and an armful of briefs. She sat down beside him and looked him over critically and didn’t even dare to take his hand like Donna did.   
  
“I’m sure I know you, but my memory’s having a bit of trouble if they haven’t already told you. You’re…”  
  
“Ainsley Hayes,” she introduced herself curtly, accent spilling over the words. “I came to see if you were really in bad shape. I don’t know who I’d bicker with if you suddenly lost the ability to recall years and years of precedents and antiquated laws.”  
  
She settled and for approximately twenty minutes, they discussed all the things that Sam might have done in a normal job (with him filling in a good twenty percent for himself, which earned little smiles of hope from Ainsley) and eventually, there came a lull in the conversation as the talk turned to the upcoming bills that were set to be reviewed.  
  
Ainsley fidgeted in the silence and Sam couldn’t seem to keep his eyes off of her.   
  
Eventually, she broke. “What?” she asked warily, as if expecting the very worst to come out of his mouth after that.  
  
“You seem like an attractive, young, blonde woman. Is there any particular reason I haven't asked you out?” Sam offered, his confusion based on his observations having been bugging him ever since they had a five minute conversation on just why she preferred pecans to peanuts before delving into the plight of certain Columbian farmers thanks to drug cartels.   
  
Something about that seemed endlessly funny, if Ainsley’s rueful smile was any indication. And then, just when Sam had about given up on a straight answer, she leaned in and gave a single nod. “I'm a Republican.”  
  
“Ah,” Sam noted, the paused. “Well.” There was another long beat. “I take it I don't like that sort of thing?”  
  
“According to you, I might as well drink blood and sacrifice virgins.” It was said in a very matter-of-fact sort of way, the way that Sam imagined people talked about the sky being blue or there being fish in the ocean.   
  
“Yes, well, that is bad.”  
  
Ainsley offered a sweet smile down in his direction, rearranging her notes and crossing her legs as she got comfortable. “And yet, not as bad as the time you claimed I cast a spell on the minority leader to make him do my deep, dark, evil bidding.”   
  
“Apparently, I'm a bastard,” Sam said, his tone wounded and somewhat surprised by the imagery held within that statement along with the sheer … well, possibility that yes, at one point, he had said something like that to her. That ounce of believing that he might have spoken those words actually gave him a glimmer of hope that the memories were slowly coming back.  
  
Ainsley reached across and rested a hand on his shoulder, lips pressed together in deep sympathy. “And you’re also a Democrat. I'm very sorry on your behalf.”  
  
That managed to make Sam laugh and the mood thawed after that, allowing the both of them to move on to the riveting discussion of hospital food and whether or not he was going to eat that strawberry jell-o sitting on the plate in front of him.   
  
*  
  
1999  
  
“You’re not going home with Josh for the funeral, I see.”  
  
Sam jolted up from where he had been penning the new additions to the speech to stare up at the candidate, forcing a nervous smile and wondering if he was still going be Stan Sternbourne today or if his name would somehow transcend the boundaries and become something else entirely. It didn’t  _really_  matter, though. Sam was of the opinion that Bartlet could forget his name all he liked if he focused that attention on policy. Josh had left them earlier to sprint for a flight and up until the last moment, Sam had offered his company.   
  
Josh told him to stay – to stay and change the country for the better.  
  
“No, sir, he thought I might be more useful here,” Sam supplied helpfully.  
  
“He may have been very right about that, Sam.”  
  
If angels had suddenly appeared to blast on their trumpets and highlight this miracle of memory, Sam wouldn’t have been surprised. Suddenly he wasn’t Stan or Scott or Seth anymore. It might have been a turning point in the campaign and Sam went from just believing in the issues and policies the man represented to the man himself. He felt something stuck in his throat that he was proud to say was genuine emotion and from that moment going forward, he would have done anything for Jed Bartlet and his campaign. All for a first name.   
  
“You’re doing excellent work on the campaign,” the Governor continued, shifting and crossing his legs as if they were just sitting about and kicking back while they talked about the things normal people did – fishing, the economy, dinner – as opposed to sparking a growth period in the economy, ensuring the toxins from Japan no longer were contained in sashimi and that dinners could be put on every table that needed one. “Even if Toby Ziegler seems to be discontented with you, but I’m beginning to think he is a man who will not be content with  _anything_.”  
  
“I’m sure he’ll come around to me,” Sam said with an upbeat tone, which only faltered as he really  _thought_  about Toby Ziegler. “Or maybe he’ll just learn to stand me?”  
  
“You and me both,” Governor Bartlet rumbled. “The man seems to be perpetuating a losing streak with those self-fulfilling prophecies of his, but do you know what, Sam?” He leaned in a little, tapping a finger to his nose. “I intend to break that streak. But don’t tell him. No use wasting good news on a man who hates to smile.”  
  
They sat there in the awkward silence and the dimmed lights for what felt like forever and no time at all and Sam began to understand that the Real Thing wasn’t perfect. That was what made it real. There were flaws shaping the man and that was what made him the perfect man for the Presidency ahead.  
  
“Staying late, Sam?” the Governor asked distractedly, neither approving or disapprovingly.  
  
“Just until I can get this perfect.”  
  
“Don’t spend eternity searching for perfection,” Bartlet warned with a glint of a smile. “Spend it achieving greatness. Perfection comes when people look at the history books and say, ‘that man, he achieved something close to perfection. And he was  _great_  for it.’”   
  
“I’ll remember that, sir.”  
  
*  
  
Sitting in a hospital bed in the middle of the night, Sam Seaborn actually did.   
  
*  
  
It was a long time before Josh Lyman actually came to visit Sam in the hospital and it had taken the doctor’s ‘all clear’ that he was good to remember all but the most minute of details. Donna had been back and so had CJ. Even Toby had made his rounds to offer Sam an inscribed pen with the words ‘Memories Make The Man’ on it, as if some vague and unfunny joke was waiting to present itself. Two nights after a visit from Leo, that was when Sam first saw Josh lurking around the halls of the hospital.  
  
It was still like there was an invisible barrier between the room and Josh Lyman. Or so you might have thought with the way he hovered just outside.   
  
“I’m not  _contagious_ ,” Sam was quick to point out, putting down Toby’s gift-pen in order to turn his full attention to Josh – almost as if the sheer act of staring could stop him from running away. Josh inched inside bit by bit, but he was making some kind of progress and it was really all that Sam could ask for. “I have to say, this is one of the weirdest experiences of my life. For a good while, it was like I was fresh out of college and making contacts all over again. Although, I doubt many matriculated students get to be so buddy-buddy with the President of the United States so soon after receiving a diploma.”  
  
Josh let out a bemused snort at that. “You know, I still remember when you met Leo, I swear…” he announced with a sputtered and genuine laugh. He perched lightly on the edge of Sam’s bed, giving his friend a soft smile. “The  _look_  on your face. I thought you were gonna have an accident.”   
  
“Can I help it if he was basically like a second father to you! I wanted to make a good impression,” Sam said defensively.  
  
“You tried to quote Gilbert and Sullivan at him.”  
  
“I didn’t  _try_. I did. And in my defense, it worked,” Sam added victoriously after a beat.   
  
Whatever discomfort Josh had worn on his face the moment he had walked into the hospital room had faded and he was exploring the room with a newcomer’s eye, stopping to look at each bouquet. “Which one of these is mine?”  
  
“Donna has good taste, don’t worry,” Sam assured.  
  
“Donna? I had CJ buy them. Except now she thinks I’m incapable of wooing women because I don’t know the price of flowers.”  
  
“What’s the price of flowers got to do with it?”  
  
“I dunno, some implication I don’t do it enough.”  
  
They shared a grin and fell into discussing topics from the past, things that helped to prod Sam’s memory along. But they didn’t stop there, going forward to talk about things that they were bound to do. Things that were going to happen, if only they got a chance.   
  
*  
  
1988  
  
There had nearly been a riot when the protestors had disagreed with the items on the Congressman’s agenda and Sam Seaborn, college-boy extraordinaire, was sent outside to deal with them. Like Pope Leo versus the Huns, it took very little to send them away. All it was happened to be a mysterious whisper of words.  
  
Sam turned back to head inside to assure the Congressman that they wouldn’t be bothering them. At least not until another controversial bill went up for vote and the people of the United States thought that they could sway the vote by  _shouting_  of all things.  
  
Sam wondered what had happened to the good old written plea.   
  
He couldn’t just walk back inside, though, because there was another man standing there and obscuring the doorway. “Hi,” Sam greeted awkwardly. “I need to go back inside before the National Guard gets called only to discover they’re fighting stray fliers.”  
  
“What’d you say?”  
  
“Excuse me?”  
  
“To those assholes, what’d you say to their first amendment kissing mouths?”   
  
“I’m guessing you’re not so much a fan,” Sam deadpanned, scooting to the right, then the left, just to see if he could slip in past this guy. Apparently that wasn’t about to happen, so Sam plastered on a polite smile until this guy got bored and let him inside. “I just told them that there were more valid ways to register their complaints.”  
  
“And they walked away. Just like that?”  
  
“I might have implied there would be free pizza if they went away.”  
  
That got a laugh out of Door-Blocking-Guy and Sam relaxed slightly, even if he still couldn’t get inside and he  _really_  did need to get back to work at some point if the Congressman was going to ever give Sam a reference letter of any good standing. He pointed and gestured uselessly to the door, uttered a lot of ‘uh’ and ‘um’s while clearing his throat.  
  
Instead of moving, the guy just clapped a hand on Sam’s shoulder and turned him away from the office building. “I’m Josh Lyman,” he introduced himself, very secretively. “Come on. I’ll buy you a hot dog and I’ll tell you all about how you should get rid of those guys going forward. You’ll need that skill for when you’re batting in the big leagues.”  
  
“What,” Sam deadpanned sarcastically. “Like you?”  
  
“Hey, the best is offering to buy you hot dogs. You don’t say no to the best!” Josh whined slightly.  
  
“Okay,” Sam agreed. “I’m Sam Seaborn.”  
  
“I know. I was sent to talk to you.”  
  
“…by who?”  
  
“By people. There are people who think you might just wind up being something one day. I told them that no kid from Duke was going to get anywhere near the higher circles of government, but they told me that you might just defy them. Apparently you wrote one helluva speech for the Congressman’s campaign,” Josh praised, even if the praise had come from a secondhand source and who knew just how removed it was. “Come on. Street meat’s waiting.”  
  
“This is probably the start of a very unnerving friendship.”  
  
“Yeah. I get that a lot.”  
  
“You don’t say.”  
  
THE END


End file.
